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Why We Have To Kiss Off Big Carbon Now
mdsolar writes When the fossil-fuel divestment movement first stirred on college campuses three years ago, you could almost hear Big Oil and Wall Street laughing. Crude prices were flirting with $100 a barrel, and domestic oil production, from Texas to North Dakota, was in the midst of a historic boom. But the quixotic campus campaign suddenly has the smell of smart money.
One of the biggest names in the history of Big Oil – the Rockefellers – announced last September that they would be purging the portfolio of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund of 'risky' oil investments. And that risk has been underscored by the sudden collapse of the oil market. After cresting at more than $107 in mid-June, the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate dipped below $50 a barrel in early January. The crash carries big costs: Goldman Sachs warned that nearly $1 trillion in planned oil-field investments would be unprofitable – even if oil were to stabilize at $70 per barrel.
One of the biggest names in the history of Big Oil – the Rockefellers – announced last September that they would be purging the portfolio of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund of 'risky' oil investments. And that risk has been underscored by the sudden collapse of the oil market. After cresting at more than $107 in mid-June, the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate dipped below $50 a barrel in early January. The crash carries big costs: Goldman Sachs warned that nearly $1 trillion in planned oil-field investments would be unprofitable – even if oil were to stabilize at $70 per barrel.
And here's the problem with free market capitalism. Now we have abandoned wellsites that nobody wants to cleanup, unemployed oil workers & related fields, and bankrupt communities that were struggling to build infrastructure during the boom now have empty roads & schools. Give it 10-15 years and we'll start the cycle all over again. This carries across to other markets, we've seen it before with the steel belt turning into the rust belt.
Yes, the free market fixes it, but not until the damage is done. You end up with an economic system where capital is rushing from one end to other at the expense of labor. It's like some new era of hunter/gathering nomads; you have people following the buffalo around.
Greed breeds myopia. Always has. Did people investing heavily in oil really think it would either keep going up, or sustain at the price peaks it was at for years? At those prices, it's all but strangling the economy. It started to actually effect just how much people drove!
And there's the problem. Oil is still king of the economy. From home energy, to the dinner table. Oil is still king. I think a good many investors forgot who just has the real power in the world. Guess the Saudis thought they should remind them.
The frustrating thing with this though, is that we still won't see the prices drop at the grocery or market, even though it's cheaper to ship goods and produce. Why pass savings onto the consumer, when you can pad the profit margin for the quarter, and stock-holders. I think a lot of people forget that, milk, bread, fruit, etc... should all be a little cheaper at the moment. It won't be.
Some of us are doing quite a lot ourselves, actually. Starting a couple years ago I actually started refusing to commute to do work that can be done just as well over the internet. Sure, it meant turning down some jobs, but it also cut my total miles driven per year (at low speed in stop-and-go traffic no less) by thousands, and my total gasoline consumption by a factor of over 90%, and though I didn't plant a tree (I don't own any land to plant it on), I did plant an herb garden on my balcony.
I am not a greenie and I don't tell others what they should or should not do but...
I don't consider myself a "greenie" either honestly, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that you totally just did tell us all what we should and should not do. I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying we should and should not do either, I'm just saying you did tell us exactly that, and you're not the only one doing it. There are lots of us, and the numbers are quietly growing. The telecommuting revolution is long overdue.
Grow up, and learn how the world really works.
Nobody is going to come back with a half way narrative, a compromised view of global warming for you to sign up to. Nobody is going to say: "Oh I see you won't agree that 5 degrees of warming is too much - let's say 7.5 degrees is the acceptable limit, deal?" Neither is the issue just going to quietly go away if you ignore it for long enough. It's a simple, brutal fact - the warming just keeps getting more and more obvious.
Grow up, get over it, and get on with it.
Otherwise, you can wait for us to get angry enough to sue you for the damage you've caused, take your stuff, and use the funds to make the necessary changes.
How bout them apples?
in a world where a producer sees the end of its market on the horizon, then every barrel sold at a profit is more valuable than a barrel that will never be sold. Current Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi had this to say about production cuts in late December: "it is not in the interest of OPEC to cut their production whatever the price is," adding that even if prices fell to $20 "it is irrelevant." Implied, if not explicitly stated, is that Saudi Arabia wants its oil out of the ground, regardless of how thin its profit margin per barrel becomes. - http://www.nasdaq.com/article/...
CO2 increases do raise temps. Methane increases do the same. Perhaps not buy a huge amount but at least you agree they do have effect. Water vapor is largely driven by temperature. So the small increase of CO2/methane causes increase in water vapor concentrations....Which causes a large increase as you so deftly note. Now that increase causes more increase. It's called a feedback loop for a reason.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Who has more money. Al Gore or the Koch Brothers? And yet the Koch Brothers can't seem to buy even 4% of scientists? If you're claiming scientists are 'bought', then why exactly aren't they singing the tune of the highest bidders?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
This is why I've been pushing to argue in favor of reducing fossil fuel use not from an environmental point of view, but from an economic one. People can bury their heads in the sand when it comes to science, but people always listen when money is involved.
Even though the US imports about a third of our petroleum, that's still equivalent to hundreds of billions of dollars per year leaving our economy. If we transition to renewable energies, that money stays around a bit longer.
Renewable energies might have a larger up-front capital cost (but not by much, and it's getting better every day), but the long term costs are overwhelmingly favorable.
With the current crash in oil prices it should be clear that our economy is in the hands of foreign interests. We are hostages to international petroleum markets. Let's develop domestic sources to free ourselves from foreign influence. Remember: There's no reason why oil couldn't have been this cheap all along, and the price only went down right when we were posed to start reducing imports in favor of domestic natural gas production. We're being played!
(Oh, and if we happen to mitigate the environmental damage we're doing in the process and avoid global catastrophe, I guess that'll be a bonus...)
=Smidge=